Representing the current pinnacle of smartphone technology, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 phone has everything that's great about the Galaxy S8, plus dual cameras and an S Pen stylus.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is a no-brainer. It takes the Galaxy S8, the best phone of the year so far, and adds dual cameras, a better screen, and the beloved S Pen stylus. It fills the shoes of the dearly departed Note 7 elegantly, and is certainly the best phone for creative types—but only those for whom price is no object. That's because, at $930 for the T-Mobile model we reviewed, the Galaxy Note 8 is currently the most expensive flagship phone in the US.

Pricing and Design

Depending on your carrier, the Galaxy Note 8 is about $100 more than the Galaxy S8+. It's $31.67 per month over 30 months on AT&T ($950), $40 per month over 24 months on Sprint ($960), $930 on T-Mobile, or $40 per month over 24 months on Verizon ($960). An unlocked model is $929.

Physically, the Galaxy Note 8 looks and feels like a larger Galaxy S8 (or, more to the point, an S8+). Its body is smooth, solid, and rounded. The screen has the very narrow bezels of the Galaxy S8, with slight sloping on the back reminiscent of the Note 5. The phone feels absolutely premium, and it comes in black and gray in the US. I'm a little concerned about durability, but no more so than with the S8 or with the current iPhones.

The Note 8 has both a USB-C port and a headphone jack. It's compatible with Samsung's Dex desktop dock that essentially turns the phone into a desktop PC. But it's too big to work with the current Gear VR headset if you want to do VR. Samsung has a compatible model that will be available starting September 15 for $129.99.

The 6.3-inch, 2,960-by-1,440 screen has 15.63 square inches of area, larger than other competing displays. The Galaxy S8+ has 15.12, the LG V30 has 14.4, the Galaxy Note 5 had 13.88, and the iPhone 7 Plus has a mere 12.92. And yet the Note 8 doesn't feel huge, because it's tall, narrow, and nearly bezel-less. At 6.38 by 2.95 by 0.34 inches (HWD) and 6.88 ounces, it's narrower, albeit taller and heavier, than the Note 5, and that width helps it fit in your hand.

Ray Soneira at DisplayMate Technologies has tested the Note 8's display and found that it's even better than the S8's. It's 22 percent brighter, with a peak brightness over 1,200 nits, and has a very large color gamut. Although I can't perceive these improvements with my naked eye, the screen is positively gorgeous.

In the box, you get a bunch of accessories: AKG-branded earbuds, two different USB adapters, and various S Pen nibs.

Battery

Samsung goes very conservative on the Note 8's battery. Neither the battery nor the battery life are particularly huge. It's understandable why Samsung is doing this: after all, the Note 7 was known to explode.

With the display settings cranked all the way up, streaming a video over LTE, we managed six hours of usage time. That's not awful, and it'll get better if you reduce display resolution or brightness. With the screen kicked down to 1080p, we got 10 hours of use, a much better result.

Samsung estimates about 22 hours of mixed usage on maximum settings, jumping to 27 hours with the screen resolution turned down and the always-on display setting off. That said, without the removable battery the Note line used to have, we wished it had a cell bigger than 3,300mAh—but still safe, of course. At least fast charging and wireless charging are both supported.

Samsung has also instituted new battery-testing procedures to make sure the Note 8 batteries are safe. We took a look at some of them on a trip to Korea before the Galaxy S8 launch, but I think the best proof of these procedures is the success of the S8 and S8+. Both phones have been popular; neither has had issues in this regard. We think Samsung can safely put the Note 7 situation behind it.

S Pen

Did you come to the Note 8 for the S Pen? You won't be disappointed. The pen pops out of a slot in the lower right of the phone, and has a new, slimmer 0.7mm tip. As soon as you pop it out, you can start writing on the screen, a mode Samsung calls Screen Off Memo. If you run out of screen, just slide your text up; it'll make more virtual space to scribble. I found the pen to be extremely accurate; when I tapped out a grid of tiny dots, it didn't miss one.

The S Pen is established enough that it's supported by several mainstream drawing apps, such as Autodesk Sketchbook. It's also been supported for years by Microsoft Office apps, giving you the ability to scribble all over Office documents and send them to your colleagues. It's really nice to be able to sign and send things without printing them out, something Apple has also been promoting with the Pencil on its iPad Pro.

Live Message is a cool new feature that wittily gets around Samsung's lack of an iMessage-like messaging platform. You can scribble things, in glowy or sparkly script, and they get turned into (widely viewable) GIFs that you can text. Relying on open standards, this is a lot better than iMessage's closed system, as anyone can see the resulting messages. Now Samsung needs to add stickers and emoji to Live Message.

Two other, smaller new enhancements: the included PEN UP app now has coloring books in it, and you can use the S Pen to swipe text to do language translations.

The company says Live Message, app pairing, and other non-pen-dependent software features will come to the S8 and S8+ down the road, but didn't commit to a timetable.

Processor and Android

The phone has 64GB of storage, of which 52.8GB is free. You can pop a 256GB microSD card in with the SIM card. There's also 6GB of RAM.

The basic processor platform in the Note 8 is the same as in the S8. It's a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, with no new features, and so it benchmarked about the same as other Snapdragon 835 devices. That's as good as Android phones get right now, of course, although it's sure to be outpaced by the new iPhone on pure processing speed. One thing to note is that switching the screen resolution, which Samsung makes easy, changes gaming frame rates. Flipping from WQHD+ to FHD+ moved on-screen frame rates in the GFXBench car chase test from 13 to 23, while the offscreen frame rate result stayed steady at 25.

The phone runs Android 7.1.1 with the usual Samsung skin. There will be an Android Oreo upgrade eventually, but Samsung isn't promising a specific date.

One neat new feature in Samsung's Android skin helps take advantage of the big screen. App Pairings are groupings of two apps that you can preset to launch together, by swiping in from the edge of the screen. Those apps will then launch in dual-window mode, one on each half of the display. That way, you can pull up your phone dialer and your calendar with a conference call code at the same time, for instance. Other Samsung phones that support dual window and edge swiping may get this feature in the future, the company said.

Samsung's Bixby voice assistant is also becoming more capable. The Note 8 can activate Bixby once you say "Hi Bixby," as well as by pressing a button on the left side of the phone. Its problem is mindshare: as I used the phone, I kept asking "OK Google" things by reflex, not Bixby. But Bixby can do pretty much everything OK Google can do, plus manage settings and local applications on the phone.

There are a few oddities in Bixby, though. When I said "note to self," it went to my notifications settings rather than recording a note; I needed to say "make a note" instead. Also, asking for directions in Google Maps threw an error message. Those problems will surely get cleaned up.

Radio and Call Quality

The Galaxy Note 8, like the Galaxy S8+, has an excellent radio that gets spectacular reception and call quality. It's only missing one thing: T-Mobile's new Band 71, which will give users additional rural coverage (it's currently only in the upcoming LG V30). That said, the Note 8 showed distinctly stronger signal on T-Mobile's network than an iPhone 7 being used in the same spot. The phone supports the full cadre of gigabit LTE technologies to extend coverage and speed; it shares that, right now, only with the Moto Z2 Force and other new Samsung devices. As we saw in our Fastest Mobile Networks study, that makes a distinct difference on speed.

Call quality is also excellent. It's crystal clear in the earpiece, and there's a powerful speakerphone with an Extra Volume option that boosts it loud enough to even be heard over traffic noise. Bluetooth 5.0 lets the phone pair with multiple headsets at once, or headsets and speakers, while the standard headphone jack accepts wired headsets.

The phone's dual-window function lets you do a neat trick if you spend a lot of time on conference calls: you can simultaneously pop up the calendar and the dialer, so you can see the conference code you need to punch in.

Camera

You don't need to worry about the basics here. The Note 8's camera is, like the Galaxy S8 camera it's based on, fast, with terrific exposure judgement and excellent low-light performance. The question is, what does the 2x optical zoom get you? Compared with the S8, it offers a noticeable improvement in sharpness, clarity, and texture, and considerably less artifacting.

The two cameras both have optical image stabilization, which explains why the S8's low-light performance is so much better than, say, the Essential Phone's. The telephoto lens collects less light than the main lens does—it's f/2.4 as opposed to the main lens' f/1.7—and you can see a bit less sharpness in very low-light conditions. But that's a wash with other phones' digital zooms, anyway.

If you have any doubts about the dual OIS, kick the phone into video mode. Recording 4K video at 2x zoom, there's a funny little lag as you move the camera, almost like you were using a Steadicam—that's the OIS in action. The video remains synced; there's no lag on the recording.

You get bokeh, which Samsung calls Live Focus, along with stickers and a somewhat questionable visual-search app called Bixby Vision. There's also panorama, slow motion, and a pro manual mode. You can expand the viewfinder to fill the whole screen, and turn the camera button into a floating button. It makes for a really immersive, big-screen feel.

The phone switches between 1x and 2x modes very quickly. The bokeh effects look great, and you can even tweak the bokeh focus after the fact, creating new JPG versions of the image with different focal depth.

I've used the Galaxy S8, the Note 8, and the LG V30 recently, and it's interesting to compare the different dual-camera approaches. Taking photos of kids at a Morris dance, for instance, I found that the wide-angle V30 encouraged me to see the whole scene as a group, while the zoom cameras encouraged me to focus on my own child. It's worth thinking about. In any case, I'd choose the wide-angle or telephoto dual-lens options over the Essential (and Huawei's) black-and-white/color dual lens, which doesn't seem to bring any picture-taking advantages.

Comparisons and Conclusions

The Note 8 is the pinnacle of smartphone technology right now. There is no better processor, no better screen, no better sound quality, no better reception, and no better camera. It costs a lot of money, but you're getting what you pay for.

Will the new iPhone upend our recommendation of the Note 8? Here's where we have to make some guesses, because we just don't have the information as of this writing. The S8 will be the only phone with the S Pen. If you're a pen user, or you could conceivably be, the Note 8 is the phone for you. If you're a faithful, longtime Samsung owner who likes the company's design and services, this device is terrific. If you have a Note 5, you're going to get faster performance, a brighter screen, and dual cameras. Go for it. If you're a Note 4 dead-ender obsessed with your removable battery, we've got nothing for you.

If you're just looking for a large-screen phone, there are a lot of options out there that won't make you pay close to $1,000. The V30 is sure to be less expensive (that's how LG rolls), and it has the additional T-Mobile coverage created by 600MHz support. Meanwhile, we can't count out the possibility that the new iPhone or Pixel will have some crazy-amazing camera technology. If you're wondering, there's no harm in waiting until mid-October, when all of these phones will almost certainly have hit the market. But I suspect any differences will be incremental. There's not going to be a feature (other than iOS, which is another story entirely) that will blow the Note 8 away.

I'm still going to recommend the Galaxy S8 for most people, though, for two reasons: It's $200 less expensive, and I have a notorious bias toward smaller, one-handed phones. But if you're looking for a reason to get the Note 8, get it. You'll be happy you did.

Read More

About the Author

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, has reviewed hundreds of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets in more than 13 years with PCMag. He's the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, hosts our One Cool Thing daily Web show, and writes opinions on tech and society.
Segan is also a multiple award-winning travel writer. Other than ... See Full Bio

Samsung Galaxy Note 8

Get Our Best Stories!

This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.